2012 In Review, And a Look Forward to 2013

Last updated on 03 Jan 2013

2012 is really easy to review, in terms of the goals I set last year : it was a bust. I didn’t complete a single goal I set myself. The painting remains unfinished, nothing was sold, nothing was submitted to Spectrum. Here is what I did manage to do:

That’s all I can remember! I don’t remember what I read or what I saw, beyond a few things that I’m not going to bother to post. This lets me know 2 things:

I wasn’t serious enough about my goals for 2012

I didn’t hold myself accountable for how I spent my time

I was going to post this year in review a few days ago, but I held off for some reason, and I’m glad I did. Yesterday, I can’t remember how, I came across this great page on creativity and more specifically, the “Sex & Cash Theory” . The theory is as follows: every creative person has two kinds of jobs – sex and cash. The sexy job is what you want to do, the cash one is what you do to pay the bills.

I’m lucky in that I find my cash job pretty sexy. Yet I spend so much time trying to create a lifestyle where I don’t have to do it. I noted in my journal yesterday that I spend a lot of time trying to create a lifestyle where I have more time, time that I would spend making things. That seems kind of dumb. Why not just make them in the first place?

This has influenced my goals for 2013. In 2013, I’m going to make things, and track my time better. Specifically, I’m not going to be restricted by making things that make money, or otherwise lead to a lifestyle where I don’t have to work. I’m happy with the cash part of my lifestyle – it’s the sex part I’m not doing too well.

In 2013, I’m going to make whatever grabs my fancy. Robots, eletronics, art, music, games, books, whatever. As long as I’m creating, and keeping track of my time, I’ll be happy. Concretely, these are my goals:

make/do the work

read more

write more

learn more

track time expenditure, what I read, what I wrote, what I learnt

I feel the first one needs a little more explaining, and I will probably do it in another blog post, but basically, you can never do anything good if you don’t do anything.

There are a few more loose goals in mind, but I feel the specificity of last years goals hurt my attempts to follow them rather than helped.